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posted by martyb on Monday August 15 2016, @09:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the correlation-!=-causation dept.

A study by Huy Le, associate professor of management at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), has identified factors that could lead more young students to successful careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields.

"People seek out the environment that fits their personal characteristics," Le said. "If they work in an arena that suits them, they'll be happy and successful. With these predictors, we can identify students with potential for obtaining a STEM degree nearly a decade before they pursue it."

Le also found no difference between the abilities of girls and boys to succeed in STEM, based on these two predictors. Essentially, if a girl and a boy have the same amount of interest and ability to succeed, they are each entirely capable of doing so.

"There are many theories about the social pressure that keeps women out of STEM," he said. "We found that young men in general were more interested in the field, but considering that young women showed the same ability in our study, that seems to suggest that the dearth of women in the field is probably due to societal factors."

Le notes that many students, especially women, who excel cognitively also have excellent verbal ability and will often choose a career other than STEM because they have so many opportunities before them. Le says that educators and counselors can influence those decisions by simply introducing students to the benefits of a career in science or engineering.

"This is a critical issue in our economy right now," he said. "We have a crippling deficit of participants in the STEM field, and if we can encourage our students to pursue this path, we'll be on our way to eradicating [the issue]."

The full report, Building the STEM pipeline: Findings of a 9-year longitudinal research project (pdf), is available at Research Gate.


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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday August 15 2016, @01:28PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Monday August 15 2016, @01:28PM (#388173) Journal

    Le notes that many students, especially women, who excel cognitively also have excellent verbal ability

    Oh god not the “women are better communicators” shit again. Yeah, gee, I wonder. Use this little tidbit of research in elementary school to prevent assigned males from doing certain projects because reasons and you people wonder why this shit happens. Also how the hell could this even be true? I have met a grand total of 1 cisfemale who is capable of communicating in writing in full, complete sentences about technical subjects. ONE!

    Also have you fucking controlled for genital mutilation. No, you didn't, yet fucking again. Shit goes wrong.

    The only way you are going to get more women in STEM is to be as cruel to them as you are to assigned males, capiche? You can either enact the American Academy of Pediatrics 2010 recommendation to offer clitoral pinpokes in USA hospitals, or if you're not willing to start the cruelty, abuse, bullying, stereotyping, glass fucking ceilings, “you can't do $thing even if you're as well behaved and mature as $other_gender” horseshit early enough, you're just going to have to conscript cisfemales and get out bullwhips and bloody them if they don't comply. And then you're going to have to let them fucking starve with no access to welfare after they train their H1B replacement so that after they fucking struggle and struggle and struggle they eventually find a position somewhere doing tech shit.

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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @02:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @02:04PM (#388180)

    But this is why NBC delayed the olympics!

    Millions in marketing revenue being generated is all based on the clear scientific fact that women that excel congitively are shallow and prefer fairytale stories than raw details and facts. Perfect for writing the grant requests for any major STEM initiative; none of the engineers would do that, they are supposed to do real work.

    The women can fill the storied title of Admin -- sort of like a windows admin, really, but also will need to be able to convey this information based on verbal cues, hair flipping, footsie, and real-time hands-on meetings as appropriate, to help keep the process STEM erect and on a firm basis, so to speak.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by chris.alex.thomas on Monday August 15 2016, @02:36PM

    by chris.alex.thomas (2331) on Monday August 15 2016, @02:36PM (#388190)

    You two guys are clear examples of why women drop out of highly technical areas because you believe the only way to be good at technical things, is to be an complete douchebag and you obviously missed the class where being knowledgable and capable, has nothing to do with acting like an insulting piece of shit.

    Women have just as good communication skills as anybody else, its just that physical and mental bullying takes a larger toll on them because they are constantly frightened of being mentally or physically abused, or reduced to a subset of their physical attributes, or having their capabilities explained through their obvious biological differences.

    You are both effectively poisonous bro-cultured assholes, who malign people like myself and drag our culture to the dumpster. You should be ashamed of yourselves, but I know you won't be, because your attitude is not to understand and improve, just attack those who try to open up our culture to those you consider to be inferior for no other reason than their females....

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 15 2016, @08:53PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Monday August 15 2016, @08:53PM (#388383)

      Women have just as good communication skills as anybody else, its just that physical and mental bullying takes a larger toll on them because they are constantly frightened of being mentally or physically abused

      I just want to emphasize this point. How many of you were beaten up for your lunch money? What did that do to you? And what if anything did the authorities do to protect you from that? Ok, now imagine that the threat didn't go away as you got older but actually got worse and exists absolutely everywhere. Including quite possibly inside your own house, where you stay because leaving means that the source of that threat will hunt you down and kill you (as well as any children you might have, and anyone who tries to protect you).

      And if you want another exercise in imagination, consider living in a world where at work, your salary is going steadily downwards, not upwards, because as your level of skill and experience increases the attractiveness of your body goes down and that was part of what you were hired for. You try to do your best to maintain it by spending hours at the gym and buying the right beauty products, but you know every year that what you are worth goes down, not up. Yes, education, training, and experience certainly help, but being attractive will make a bigger difference than any of that. Oh, and if someone comes up and hits on you because you're trying to look attractive for work (see above), you have to smile politely even though you don't want to have anything at all to do with this person. You also have to avoid being seen as ambitious and definitely cannot too hard on your underlings (the same behavior is not only accepted but encouraged in your colleagues).

      Guys, don't believe me, though: Get to know some women to the point where they'll trust you with the truth about how they really feel about life, and you'll learn all about it. Start with your sisters if you have them.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.